Developer-slash-tester: The New X-Men


2 m read


Testing Methodolo­gies

xmenlogoRecently I got a chance to mete Peter, an old friend of mine, a tester of the good ones. And as we were chatting he told me of his first experience with an agile team. Peter kindly allowed me to write about it in one of my ‘software testing articles’ as he calls them. He was astonished from the first group meeting they were holding to work on some issues. The thing is that the developers were discussing how they should test the new feature. Not how he, the tester, would, but how they will do all as a team.

The question “how are we going to build that stuff in order for it to work properly” almost made him loose consciousness. He is one of the old-school guys, that probably is the reason of his reaction.

How’d the process go?

So he told me how all was going. As the features were built developers were writing all tests from unit to browser level. And a special developer was even doing manual tests. Then only was all passed to him and a fully integrated environment. So it was a rare occasion for him to find a bug that was caused by inaccuracy. Most were crawling in all kinds of user scenarios that were not pre-discussed.

Thus the process turned around a bit. Software testing was done before, rather than after it was getting to my fellow tester. Yet that is a positive side. He was still needed and could do his job even better due to the fact he had more time. Although he had to put more effort in the processes beginning. There his experience was of tremendous value. But where is all this head?

The general idea is that the new hybrid of developers and testers is the future, as my friend said. And these exact words he asked me to write in one of my ‘articles’.


